Artist Thinking Quotes

#1. I don't think people are born artists; I think it comes from a mixture of your surroundings, the people you meet, and luck.

Francis Bacon

#2. I like collaborating, but I felt I should do my first single by myself so people don't think I'm leaning on other artists to be a success.

Missy Elliot

#3. For an artist to think in terms of success is like a priest trying to think in terms of success.

Graham Greene

#4. I paved the way for a lot of white artists now that don't have to deal with the stigma of being a white artist. I don't think that people would be as open for non-African American artists like that if it I didn't take a lot of the slack for them.

Jon B.

#5. I think for every artist it's important to always keep this amount of doubt until the very last day of shooting.

Gaspard Ulliel

#6. And I want to find a way to be of service to humanity. I think that's crucial. So want to be an artist and a servant, a humanitarian, and I want to play goofy weirdoes.

Rainn Wilson

#7. I don't go around thinking about regret; regret doesn't consume me as a person ... I'm not certain about whether any writer, any artist, any musician, can write without regret, so I don't think perhaps it's even particularly Southern.

Barry Hannah

#8. Success gave me confidence as an artist. And now I'm able to do what I want without anybody thinking it's dumb.

Amy Lee

#9. The parallels between Elvis and Michael Jackson as incredible artists is evident. But I think that where Michael Jackson even transcends Elvis Presley.

Michael Eric Dyson

#10. I love feeding off the audience, and to me, what's the point if you're not going to think of the fans. Anyone can play music in their house, but you put it out because you want interact with your fans. And, as an artist, you get so much from your fans.

Dido Armstrong

#11. I went to school at the San Francisco Art Institute, thinking I was going to become an art teacher. Within the first six months I was there, I was told that I couldn't be an art teacher unless I became an artist first.

Annie Leibovitz

#12. I think it's what the times are demanding. If you're talking about the popular artists, they collaborate with a lot of different people and it seems to be in vogue now. It probably is indicative of the times.

Joan Jett

#13. Everyone is an artist and a genius, I think. If we don't choose to limit ourselves then we are totally accomplished.

Yoko Ono

#14. There's a lot of other artists doing things outside of that depth that I enjoy - that music that I can actually have fun to, and not be in depth and think about, then I appreciate that.

Kendrick Lamar

#15. I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait the artist recorded in stone, he had seen in life, and better than his copy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#16. I think what we (as a society) need from artists of all kinds is courage, a willingness to explore, and a really big sense of possibility.

Sharon Salzberg

#17. Frightening for many artists is promoting themselves. They feel it is ... artificial and not what we want to be known for. Yet if we start thinking about what we do as important and important to offer to people, not to sell ... it allows us to shift the way we think about promoting ourselves.

Adam Leipzig

#18. But you know, we have more hits than you can possibly think about. One of my personal favorite artists is the wonderful artist named Cher. And although I love much of her late stuff, her early stuff was the stuff that I really, really loved.

Colin Mochrie

#19. An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he's AT somewhere. You always have to realize that you're constantly in a state of becoming. And, as long as you can stay in that realm you'll sort of be alright.

Bob Dylan

#20. I think for an artist there are so many things to make pictures of now, that everyone else may be suffering, but at least artists will just be stimulated by it all.

Eric Drooker

#21. I think it's like everything you do is just a reflection of who you are as an artist.

Jonny Lang

#22. I wouldn't even say "Imagine" is political. I think it's more just sort of declaration of humanity. I don't find his political songs to be the ones that I go home and listen to. And I would say that of any artist. They're not the ones that interest.

Sean Lennon

#23. I think there should be a reworking of the value structure of art. The value is when the artist makes a first engagement with society. That work has the most value. That is the function of the artist. That result.

Lawrence Weiner

#24. Me being able to be acting and doing other things has opened me as an artist, and I think even more from a visual standpoint.

Common

#25. I wonder what art is about and I'm not sure that what I do is art because I'm a photographer, not an artist. But whatever you do, the secret is to do what you think you ought to do, and do the hell out of it.

Todd Walker

#26. I can't look at you anymore. I just want to kiss the fuck out of you. There's no way ... What the hell would you want with a guy like me?
A guy like him? Was he kidding? Beautiful Gabriel, my ever-demanding artist. What in the world was he thinking?

C.L.Stone

#27. I think the idea of the lone tormented artist - which we can apply to others - I think that it needs to be revisited. Jack Kerouac needs to be seen in the context of a lot of other artistic activity.

Anne Waldman

#28. As an artist, I didn't think I was gonna get an Oscar. I've never said this, but I've never looked at it like, "We're gonna win Best Supporting Actor."

O'Shea Jackson Jr.

#29. I think artists can go to a level of vision that can often save us from a situation which seems to have no solution whatsoever.

Susan Griffin

#30. I feel like I am beginning to be a part of a musical community, but I wouldn't say I'm a country artist because I wouldn't want to invalidate anybody else or to even begin to be so preposterous as to think I can just skate into town and get some fans.

Sheryl Crow

#31. Create with the heart; build with the mind.

Criss Jami

#32. The thing about living in New York is that there are other artists; that is the most difficult, I think they are the hardest critics.

Julian Schnabel

#33. I don't think I ever really decided I was an artist. I went to college to learn how to think and look at art. In the end, I developed a more sophisticated misunderstanding of art.

Gavin Turk

#34. Designers + artists see potential in things where others do not. I think artists in many ways are the original entrepreneurs.

Brian Chesky

#35. Artists no longer starve in garrets. Some people may think this is not wholly a good thing, that being an artist has become too comfortable, at least in the West. I'm not sure I agree. It's a mark of civilization to encourage the arts and the life of the mind.

J.M. Coetzee

#36. Life and mind are continuously in conflict with each other. I want happiness, security. I won't reach that by considerations of my mind; on the contrary they will lead to a certain despair of the inner person. Not what he thinks engages the artist, but what he feels.

Bram Van Velde

#37. The biggest problem that I see that young artists have is they aren't willing to fail. And unless you fail a lot, I think it's difficult to find a voice that shouts above the crowds.

Jacob Hashimoto

#38. There's a lot of madness going on out there. Artists can only be what they are, but the industry only goes with what they think people wanna hear.

Pras Michel

#39. I think an artist is anybody who does something well, like if you cook well.

Andy Warhol

#40. I think most artists feel like they're outside society - no matter how many accolades they receive, or how much money is in your bank account, whatever is going on in your life on the professional side.

Aaron Rose

#41. When we think of Leonardo da Vinci, the last thing that comes to mind is the nationality of the artist. The great masters belong to the world.

Igor Babailov

#42. I think I would prefer to partner with someone once I've established what I actually am trying to do as a solo artist with my actual name.

Michelle Chamuel

#43. We're all given a window of opportunity, I think all artists are, of any genre. A window when you're truly relevant, the spotlight's on you and people are watching what you do.

Eric Church

#44. I think ... it is somehow very useful, and maybe even essential, for a fine artist to have to somehow make his peace on the canvas with all the things he cannot do. That is what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call 'personality,' or maybe even 'pain.'

Kurt Vonnegut

#45. Who knows what the future holds but I think I'll always be that dude that can run hooks, and do hooks for other artists, and really know how to make a catchy hook.

SonReal

#46. I do think I paid a price as an artist, and I am trying to make up for it now - I work six days a week in the studio, and I've never been happier.

Michael Craig-Martin

#47. I think that music is stale because of it. I think that we have the same artists from day to day. It's nice to see an artist dip out and come back in every once in awhile. There's a such thing as oversaturating the market. I mean look at Britney.

Willa Ford

#48. I think an artist has the potential to investigate both form and content within one activity, to show that there can be coherence between form and values in our society, as in thinking about a city and building one.

Olafur Eliasson

#49. I think that hip-hop is more of an individual effort. That means you're an artist from the streets, they expect you to rap about the streets, because that's what happens there.

Conor Oberst

#50. I think it's almost a unique control that artists can have now more than they ever did, I think if you don't be proactive about how you want your music to be visually represented, I think other people will do it for you - so how comfortable are you with people putting their own two cents on it?

Lizzy Plapinger

#51. For me there are no rules. I think I learned that from artists-from painters and sculptors. It took photography a while to catch up to them.

Larry Clark

#52. And it's always the same kind of artist, I think, who has more enjoyment being slightly on the outside of things, who doesn't want to be sucked into the tyranny of the mainstream. Because once you get sucked into that, you're dead as an artist.

David Bowie

#53. I've been a solo artist for a year now, and I think I should start thinking about the future now. Every spare time I get, I want to be in the studio and work on music for 2015. It's a lot of work.

Shane Filan

#54. I think as an actor, you're more like a dancer, and you have to use your body. I don't understand all these questions about nudity. It's a nonsense. He's an actor, an artist, so get on with it.

Steve McQueen

#55. I want to be a mature artist with a different kind of thinking.

Maria Callas

#56. Whitney Houston is my idol and my mentor and my dream forever, like she will always be my favorite artist, ever, on the planet. Like I don't think I'll ever feel that way about another artist.

Brandy Norwood

#57. My favorite recordings are the ones that feel like there were no middlemen in the creation. That's the biggest problem with most films and records being made today - too many people involved. I think it dilutes the artist's intent and inspiration.

M. Ward

#58. Fast food, fast money, shallow thinking, shallow interpretations. This is now what I deal with everyday. Art was meant to be about freedom, about having the courage to explore what it means to be human.

Emma Raveling

#59. All you can do as an artist is do what you think is an extension of you. You put down on paper ... who you are. Thats what being an artist is all about. And when it gets done, you dont look back at it and say, Oh, I could have done that better

Justin Timberlake

#60. I think I'm a full-time artist, a full-time urban planner, and a full-time preacher with an aspiration of no longer needing any of those titles. Rather, I'm trying to do what for some seems a very messy work or a complicated work.

Theaster Gates

#61. So the problem for the poetic artist or the photographer is the common problem of continuous attentiveness, continuous attempts to notice what he is noticing, continuous alertness to catch himself thinking or seeing, devotional attentiveness to the world he's moving through.

Allen Ginsberg

#62. Even if I weren't learning new roles and getting the opportunity to be coached by incredible people, I still think I would be so excited to have an opportunity to continue to push myself and grow, as an artist.

Misty Copeland

#63. When you listen to an album, it shouldn't feel like, "That's the girl song," "That's the club song." I shouldn't know what you're thinking while you're making the song. I don't want to know what the artist is thinking.

Jay-Z

#64. As I have continued to make music and progress as an artist, I think I am steadily getting better at expanding my lyrical content and defining who I am as an artist.

Mike Stud

#65. As for the industry, it has certainly changed. I think with all of these television shows and YouTube and the internet, you have so much less time to develop as an artist and perfect your craft. So many things today are "instant" and, that's not always a good thing.

Olivia Newton-John

#66. An artist does his most difficult work when he steps back from the blank canvas and thinks about what he is going to create.

Michelangelo

#67. I don't think a songwriter should lose their mojo. In my situation, I'm one of those artists that lasts over a long period rather than have your moment and your moment is gone.

Jimmy Cliff

#68. I like a lot of artists but I think the one that touched me the most was probably Tupac, coming up. Cause that was my generation, so Tupac was mine.

French Montana

#69. Every good artist I know, I always think works hard, we're working all the time.

David Hockney

#70. I'm not a writer, but today I think you have to be everything. As an artist you have an obligation to let people know what is on your mind and why you're doing this.

Ai Weiwei

#71. You can think of a painter as a trio - the artist, his talent and his muse, the last two always on the lookout for a new brush man.

Robert Breault

#72. I think artists should be able to do different things whenever they want and I like the way I am. I'm like - I ain't gonna say the only street rapper, but the only mainstream, new, young street rapper there is right now and I'm doing well with it.

Meek Mill

#73. In terms of my inspirations to become an artist, I think they come from early ideas and impressions about community, and the type of community I wanted to be in, and the type of thinking I wanted to do.

Laura Owens

#74. When I started thinking about it, I was like, 'OK, if throughout time I get labeled as a conscious artist, I'll be very much celebrated, in a way, and honored.'

Common

#75. My father was a psycho-analyst and I think that fact was very influential on my development as an artist. Trying to search beneath the surface of things for an unexpected sense of mystery.

Gregory Crewdson

#76. Very few people have a natural feeling for painting, and so, of course, they naturally think that painting is an expression of the artist's mood. But it rarely is. Very often he may be in greatest despair and be painting his happiest paintings.

Francis Bacon

#77. Anything can be misinterpreted. People can look at Christ on a cross and think, This is an image of murder, this is violent, this has sexual imagery in it. And it just - I think it's my job as an artist to be out there pushing people's buttons and making them question everything.

Marilyn Manson

#78. The artist's life is to be where life is, active life, found in neither ivory tower nor concrete shelter; he must be out listening to everything, looking at everything, and thinking it all out afterward.

Sean O'Casey

#79. When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.

H.L. Mencken

#80. I just appreciate what Andre 3000 has done musically - just the bravery. I think Andre 3000 may be one of the bravest artists in rap music.

Nas

#81. I try not to think retrospectively. It's important, as an artist, to look forward, always. I do try to take work that involves some challenge. If you approach a piece of work and you're going, "Yeah, yeah, I can do that," then that's kind of a red flag.

Cillian Murphy

#82. I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue - which is what many people think I am, for that matter.

Paul Gauguin

#83. I think all the poets and artists
have always written for peace and love,
and it hasn't changed much
in the last two or three thousand years.
But we hope.

Maximilian Schell

#84. I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

Margot Fonteyn

#85. Country music artists are staying true to their roots, keeping it country but throwing a little bit of rock flair in there which I think is a good thing.

Jason Aldean

#86. I think it's really important for real artists to make sure they're honest.

Pixie Lott

#87. So is fighting incompleteness the source of artistic neurosis? I doubt it. At most, this would apply to artists who deal with particular kinds of problems. I don't think we should think of Haydn or Mozart or Dickens or George Eliot in these terms.

Philip Kitcher

#88. I think the artist's job throughout history has been to tell - to say things that people are inspired by.

Russell Simmons

#89. I have to perfect my beard every morning and it takes a long time. I think a lot of musicians are into graphic design and art. I decided to be a little bit of an artist on my face.

Craig David

#90. A lot of my friends are musicians or artists, and their talent always pushes me to think creatively.

Erin Willett

#91. I think designers are starting to realize that we're all in the same industry. We're making clothes - we aren't saving the world. I'm not saying that designers aren't artists, but at the end of the day, we make clothes.

Joseph Altuzarra

#92. I've always felt that most jazz artists don't need producers .. most jazz artists know what kind of sound they want. They don't need a producer to come in there and tell them, "Oh, I think you should do this." I've always found it very strange that there's been such a thing as producers in jazz.

Christian McBride

#93. Heidi [Montag]'s a far more talented artist. Personally, I think Lady Gaga is repulsive and classless.

Spencer Pratt

#94. I think great art goes beyond the control of the artist. In some ways, art often makes itself and reveals things about that artist that maybe the artist is not fully conscious of.

Lisa Yuskavage

#95. I think as an artist that's the best thing you can have - a personal stamp on something.

Elle Fanning

#96. Artists often think they are going to die before their time. They seem to possess a heightened sense of the passing of the hours.

Catherine Drinker Bowen

#97. I think as an actor, or any artist, you move with your moods and you express what's going on for you, and you answer to that voice within that's calling for particular things.

Guy Pearce

#98. I don't think there's anything to be afraid of. Failure brings great rewards - in the life of an artist.

Quentin Tarantino

#99. That was an important development for me, just realizing that you need to follow your pleasure, at least as a painter. I think any kind of artist needs to, no matter what you're doing.

John Currin

#100. I think artists should define themselves. They should speak about their work and how it relates to society and what's going on in the world.

Jose Parla